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Saturday, September 28, 2013

Bearing Fruit

In the garden this
morning I am shown again that there can be no fruitfulness without dying to
self, without being prised-apart by the hands of a loving Creator.

We live in a society
that demands of us that we resist aging – and so deny ourselves the opportunity
of fruitfulness, of investing in others. It is not because our culture is superficial
that we prize eternal youth. It is because we prize eternal youth that we have
become superficial.

How can we possibly
submit to those hands, to that process, unless our eyes are opened to a bigger
Story than our Self?

The invitation to
enter into communion with

the ripe Spirit, who
gives life to the world;

the pierced and
wounded Son;

the undefended
Father, burst open by love.

(The seed pods of the
Iris open out revealing three chambers, a Trinitarian crown of glory.)

“Until we walk with
despair, and still have hope, we will not know that our hope was not just hope
in ourselves, in our successes, in our power to make a difference, in our image
of what perfection should be. We need hope from a much deeper Source. We need a
hope larger than ourselves.” Richard Rohr

“When the signs of
age begin to mark my body (and still more, when they touch my mind), when the
ill that is to diminish me or carry me off strikes from without or is born
within me; when the painful moment comes in which I suddenly waken to the fact
that I am ill or growing old; and, above all that last moment when I feel I am
losing hold of myself and am absolutely passive within the hands of the great
unknown forces that have formed me; grant that I may understand that it is you
(provided only that my faith is strong enough) who is painfully parting the
fibres of my being in order to penetrate to the very marrow of my substance and
bear me away within yourself.” Teilhard de Chardin